Sitting in a restaurant in Norway, the environmental campaigner tucks into her whale steak with red wine sauce and gratinated potatoes. This time it's slightly overcooked and bitter in taste, but it won't prevent Elisabeth Saether from ordering the dish again in the future. In the Nordic country, one of only two nations in the world to conduct commercial whaling, eating a slice of whale is as common as eating cod or salmon – even for greens.

Most people here are bemused when you explain that the majority of westerners outside Norway would be horrified at the thought of eating whale meat. And none more so than in the Lofoten Islands, an archipelago about 130 miles north of the Arctic Circle and the centre of the country's whaling industry. "It's a natural resource like any other," reckons Brita Malnes, 44, behind the counter of her cornershop in the port of Henningsvaer. "People [outside Norway] get very emotional when it comes to whales, but they don't get emotional about a cod or a chicken. What's the difference?"

Round the corner, Olaug Johanssen, an energetic 81-year-old out on her daily power walk, reckons whale is good for the body. "It's a very healthy meat. I like to buy it fresh from the fishermen when they come back to shore," she said.

"French people eat snails and it's considered fine. It's the same with this," reckoned 26-year-old Erik Ellingsen as he was packing slabs of common minke whale in blue boxes at a processing plant.

Eating whale is so normal here that the country's prime minister was filmed on a documentary cooking a slice of the red meat for his parents – the perfect way to portray himself as a regular Joe. It is safe to say Gordon Brown would not do the same stunt to curry favour with voters.

Conservation groups have not mounted high-profile campaigns here in years, as fighting whaling is not a top priority for them. "Whaling is not the biggest threat to the common minke whale," said Maren Esmark, head of conservation at WWF Norway. Other things, such as collision with ships or chemical pollution of the seas, are, she argues.